


nociception

by AdiAbieu



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:21:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdiAbieu/pseuds/AdiAbieu
Summary: Their love could be violent, passionate, all teeth and grips on wrists and hips flexing harder, pushing against barriers. They could be guttural, and wrecking, and consuming.But it was also gentle, and tender, and two women in love with their soft nature.





	nociception

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this is a little late. 6 small areas of pain sanvers explore together and one they don't.
> 
> Inspired by the Punisher.

**_Scar tissue_ **

Maggie's back hit the sheets, arching even as she thrust upwards.

Maybe it was the ravenous look in Alex's eyes when she watched Maggie cuffing a suspect at their bust that afternoon.

Or maybe it was how she had no sooner got the harness tightened around her hips than lips brushed the shell of her ear and moaned  _ Maggie, please, put it in me _ .

It may even have been the way Alex flipped them and clawed at her chest, taking the toy right down to the base.

Whatever it was, Maggie was lost to it. She was in a trance, the only persisting thought being to continue driving upwards, keep drawing out those noises from Alex's throat.

She wasn't aware of herself really, focused on the undulation of their hips, of the way Alex took the toy like she wanted more. It was why Alex's noise of pained surprise took a moment to sink in. In a melody of pleasure, it was an off-key note, forcing Maggie to wake from her rhythmic trance and take stock.

She flickered her gaze here and there and saw it: her thumb digging right into the white grooves of a scar. It sliced up Alex's thigh in a ghostly white, tensed with their frozen motions.

Maggie had seen it before, and yet hadn't registered that the tissue might still be giving Alex some pain, the kind of ache that warns of bad weather or causes a joint to give out when you least expect it. 

She shook the dizzy arousal from her mind, flattening her palm and sliding it away. "Shit, babe, I'm sorry-"

"No." A grip shot around her wrist, dragging it back and pressing into the scar. "More."

Alex's eyes were wild, adding electricity to her raspy plea.

"More?" Maggie parroted, and then squeezed at the muscle around it, before slipping her thumb along the length of the puckered skin.

The result was instantaneous, a shudder went up Alex's body, mouth dropping forward in a surprised moan. Her grip loosened on Maggie's wrist, hips naturally falling back into the previous rhythm.

Stunned, Maggie watched as Alex rode her furiously, her own touch aiding between her own legs. She dug her thumb into the deepest part of the scar until her girlfriend cried out in strained pleasure. She realised the effect all at once and shot up, wrapping her other arm around Alex's heaving torso. She traced the edge of one rib until she found the scar where Alex had just missed out on a punctured lung from a Burza'Kyte talon and pressed into it.

Alex draped her arms around Maggie's shoulders, crying out once, twice into her shoulder before contorting away into the throes of her orgasm.

After, as one, they collapsed back again the pillows. Alex struggled to catch her breath, forehead leaning against Maggie's breast. Maggie framed her face and kissed at her hairline, then relaxed back with a long sigh. They lay like that for a while, gasping for breath.

Eventually they rearranged, Alex carefully sliding off the toy and laying back. When Maggie wrangled the harness of her hips, she resettled herself and saw the darkness pinching at her girlfriend's features.

"Are you okay?" she asked, fearing she'd went too far and hurt her.

"Yeah, I..." Alex smoothed hair away from where sweat had slicked it at her temples. "I haven't thought about that in a long time."

Maggie didn't want to intrude where she wasn't welcome. A memory shared was a request of trust, it couldn't just be demanded. But she couldn't help but imagine what it was. Maybe an early mission, maybe a mistake that cost the life of another agent, maybe not even related to the DEO. Maybe it was-

"I was stabbed," Alex announced, reaching down to dance her fingertips over the edges of the long-healed wound.

"By an alien?"

"Yeah," Alex sighed, "By a Hellgramite. Their spike pierced my thigh." She flexed the muscle, showing off the ridges of the scar. "It got infected, something I picked up in the warehouse I think. I had to have some minor surgery on it. This is what's left."

Another patch of silence, letting that revelation fizzle away into the hum of the aircon. Maggie knew of the species, knew of the nastiness of the injuries they could cause. She let Alex have the room, let her bring forward this memory in her own time.

"It was really..." Alex bit her lower lip, looking off into a space on the ceiling. "I killed her in the end."

"You killed the Hellgrammite?"

"Yeah." A beat. "And Kara's aunt. That's who he was working with."

"You killed a Kryptonian?"

"Not at the time this happened." She tapped at the scar, as if marking the date on a calendar. "It was later, but everytime I see the scar, I think about...that."

"How did it happen?"

"I was wearing kryptonite-infused body armour. She was gonna kill J'onn so I just I..." Alex blew out a breath. "I ran her through."

Maggie examined the sharp features of Alex's profile as she imagined the scene; Alex taking a green sword and running a Kryptonian through with it. Someone who should have been a God over humans, and Alex struck her down.

A strange urge to run the flat of her tongue along the scar surged up inside her. She wanted to feel its texture, taste the violence that Alex received and subsequently gave in return. It drove home more vividly than ever that she was in bed with a warrior.

She almost wanted to offer Alex the harness from the floor and roll over onto her belly, to be ravaged, to be conquered by the strength and-

"Maggie, are you listening to me?"

Blinking away the overwhelming, primal call inside of her, she saw Alex's bemused expression. The somber mood began to recede back into the regular afterglow.

"Where did you go?" Alex asked.

"Nowhere," Maggie replied, sliding her fingertips up the thrumming pulse in Alex's throat, right to her jaw, and traced along the bone. She tilted Alex's chin up, kissed her once to reassure her, "I'm right here."

"You're not..." Alex spins on her side, propping up her head. "Mad, are you? I mean, I had to. She was gonna kill J-"

"I haven't forgotten what happened with the Kryptonians," Maggie interjected, as if that spoke volumes. She reached over to tickle along the scar around Alex's rib. "But are we gonna talk about how you're into pain now?"

Alex huffed in exasperation. "Shut up and roll over."

She was rarely the little spoon in their relationship, and yet with the visions of Alex, and fire and blood in her mind, she let this be an exception.

 

**_Biting_ **

It was no secret between them that when they spoke less and lost themselves to sex, it was a heightened experience.

They were great communicators, had always been able to crack open cases by talking them through, but there was something about abandoning language. Something about the taboo of biting, about controlled harm, about consumption and how an animal sets it jaws around the neck of their mate.

Alex learned fairly quickly that Maggie was a biter.

When they screwed somewhere they shouldn’t be, Maggie usually latched her teeth into Alex’s shoulder and used the material of her shirt to stifle her moans. 

Always the scientist, she used the biting as an indicator. She learned the right time to slide her fingers inside. She discovered that when Maggie bit at her neck and shoulder she wanted to be fucked harder, but also learned when to stretch and rock until Maggie’s toes curled and her chest rose in glorious, slow-pulsing release.

And Alex didn’t mind being nibbled at. The nipping of Maggie's teeth in fleshy areas often sent her blood pumping, bringing it to the very surface of her skin.

The real impact came later, when those marks bloomed red on her skin.

It came to a head after a training exercise. She slipped on her underwear after a shower, lost to the usual humdrum of the locker room. She pulled on her bra when she heard the initial wolf whistle, but thought nothing of it.

Then she heard, “Your girlfriend bites as much as she barks, huh?”

There was a smattering of jeers, and then calm. Still, Alex continued to dress.

A pair of socks whacked her on the back of her head. “Hey Danvers, you ignoring me now?”

She scooped the socks from the ground and spun around. Every pair of eyes in the locker room were fixed on her, their chests heaving with giggles like a pack of baying hyenas around her.

Agent Lions leaned against her locker, and nodded at her waist. “You didn’t get those in the field.”

Another few wolf whistles sang in their air as Alex looked down and saw the line of red hickeys leading from her sternum down to the waistband of her underwear. Maggie had insisted on marking the trail her lips followed from Alex’s ribcage down between her legs.

Her ears went hot as she took in the grinning faces of her subordinates. But she didn't feel undermined, didn't feel embarrassed. It was a common occurrence for the agents to jeer about sex. About the men and women they'd slept with. It was all just locker room talk amongst the female agents who were close.

All that time, Alex had listened in and felt strange that she wasn't experiencing what they were. It would be one agent one week, another the next. It went around in a revolving circle, always missing Alex, who didn't date, didn't go out, didn't fuck around.

She remembered feeling left out, feeling ridiculous and childish that she was hurt by it. Feeling like she wasn't experiencing what other agents her age were, feeling not good enough, fun enough, but remembering where feeling not fun enough had gotten her before.

And so finally,  _ finally _ , it was her turn. It was her turn to have silly grins directed at her, to have wolf whistles and cheers thrown her way.

She rolled her eyes and threw her towel in the direction of Agent Lions, but she lapped the attention up.

When Maggie met her later, she rightfully got taken back down a peg or two.

The detective narrowed her eyes at the atrium, then swung that gaze towards Alex. "Am I being paranoid or are Lions and Henderson grinning at me?"

Alex smoothed her palm down the line of marks under her shirt. "They may have seen the, uh, gifts you left last night."

"Oh," Maggie said, frowning. Alex waved vaguely at her own torso, and Maggie's eyes bugged, "Oh..."

"Yup. They had a few things to say."

Maggie looked over her shoulder at Lions and Henderson, nodded, and then swung back towards the elevators, dragging Alex with her.

"Let's go give them some more to talk about, huh?"

 

**_Spanking_ **

Red bumper, blue bumper, the cascading rainfall of neon lights. She flicked, again, but it was no use. The tiny metal ball shot straight down and the defeating tones of the machine blared out around her.

She hung her head. “Damn.”

“Damn?” Alex challenged from her perch beside her, casually leaning against the adjacent pinball machine. “I’d say it’s more than that.”

Maggie looked up and saw the yellow blinking digits. There was just under a 2000 point disparity between her and her girlfriend's score.

She raised an eyebrow and rifled in the pocket of her jeans for more change. “One more go?”

"If you think you can do much better…" Alex twirled towards the losing score. “You’re on.”

They were in the pinball place that Alex had initially suggested all that time ago. It turned out to be that and so much more, an upmarket arcade with a fully stocked and serving bar. It was impressive, and Maggie had to admit that if she had taken Alex up on the offer, the atmosphere and the noise would have distracted her enough from being dumped.

After another two turns, the results were closer but the same. Alex slapped Maggie’s ass and winked. “This round’s on you, Sawyer.”

And as Alex swayed and weaved her way through the light crowd towards the bathrooms, Maggie stood stock tall, electrified at the touch. Her stomach slowly unclenched itself, and she made her way to the bar like a robot with a programmed automation.

Ordering another round for them, Maggie thought of the simple act that had burst a bubble of arousal in her stomach. Maybe it was the confidence that grew with Alex every day, but arousal seeped slowly into her blood. 

She hadn’t been a huge fan of academia, especially after her secluded high school experience, but more often than not she found herself attracted to intelligent women; med students, art historians, aspiring lawyers, architects. She enjoyed the company and conversation that someone passionate about their career could bring. 

In college she dated a physics major, who was fascinated by the power and potential of electricity. Sometimes she snuck Maggie into her lab, turned off all the lights and showed her the snaps and crackles of electricity zapping between machines.

Her relationship with Alex felt like a stable current, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t the occasional spark.

Seated at a high table, she let her gaze wander around the domed roof of the arcade. “I like this place.”

Alex smiled, gesturing over at a row of pool tables. “I knew you would. That’s why I asked you.”

Maggie tipped the neck of her bottle over at her girlfriend. “If I’d have said yes the first time, I’d have thought you were trying to sleep with me, and then tried it on with you, and then you would have freaked out.”

With a noise of protest, Alex shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You freaked out at the very mention of girls, nevermind kissing one.”

“If you’d have kissed me? I’d have melted, closet or no closet.”

Air hockey went much the same way; Maggie was a strategy player, unprepared for the solid might of Alex’s reflexes. Pool was foregone by two rounds of bowling, which proved to be more of a competition. But this spark - it kept happening. Alex played with her hair, tugged her closer by the belt loops, toyed with the collar of her jacket, and slapped at her ass when she lost and had to forfeit by buying their drinks.

“What has gotten into you tonight?” Maggie said, grabbing Alex’s wrist after one such swat.

Alex, all teeth and mischief, whispered. “Hopefully, you.”

The spanking occured again and again; their playful interaction wasn't what startled Maggie. It was the fact she was electrified with a single facetious slap.

With the presentation of the Barenaked Ladies tickets, a morning before work where she forgot her badge, Alex trying to get her out of view of the TV, or to move away from the stove.

At the bar, Winn told a story of a girlfriend he had who wanted him to take part in a misbehaving schoolgirl type roleplay, with him spanking her for being a bad girl. The anecdote had the entire group in stitches. Alex's arm lazily thrown around Maggie's shoulder, she had grinned from ear to ear as Winn continued to dramatically flail his arms and insist he couldn't stand to go through with it.

(Later, at the bar, Winn confessed to Maggie the real reason he was freaked out was because as a child of the foster system, he felt violence against children wasn't something he could stomach even pretending to be involved with.)

Maggie began to contemplate the misogyny she had regarded spanking with. She knew cops who had been disciplined for slapping the behinds of their female colleagues, had seen female cops turning a blind eye when one of their colleagues exerted too much force with a criminal who took it upon himself to make comments or sneak an inappropriate touch.

It happened more and more. In the mornings before work, if Maggie said something which broke Alex's case wide open, if it was her round of drinks to buy, in public, in private, and all with that splitting grin.

Maggie had never been the type to be thrown over someone’s knee, but she couldn't help but feel the shot of arousal each time. More often than not, challenging Alex on this led to fooling around, which led to kissing, which led to clothes beind discard and Maggie propped on some surface with Alex's head between her legs.

She never had this back and forth with other girlfriends, had not a single one who slapped her ass or winked in a way that signalled future debauchery.

And Maggie loved it. But she didn't know why. It was obvious from the beginning of their relationship that Alex was a different girl to the ones Maggie had dated before. She had dated brains, and beauty, and both mostly. But Alex had plenty of brawn when she wanted. She could go toe to toe with Maggie professionally and personally, and perhaps the thrill Maggie received was the idea that Alex could be playful, could throw her around a room and treat her in a way no woman had treated her before.

Eventually, she decided she didn’t need to know why Alex was different, and simply concluded that the body answers what the head refuses to.

With the hard cut of the couch fabric on her sternum, Maggie glanced over her shoulder. Her feet were toed apart, Alex slicking a toy in her fist. She realised she didn’t need to labour over this any longer. She arched her back, pushing back, aware of the flush on her skin.

"You gonna keep a lady waiting all night, Danvers?"

“Behave, you.”

"Or what?"

"You know what."

_ Smack _ .

A moment later, Alex was pushing inside of her, one hand resting on the heated patch of skin. 

She let that be the last of her worrying about it.

 

**_Hair pulling:_ **

In her freshman year of college, Alex had taken a boy from her Intro to Biology class back to her dorm. They had been friendly as lab partners, and she thought he was flirting with her at the party where they ran into each other. He was sweet enough, so she invited him back.

Either from the party or the excitement, his thick hands were clammy, and they got tangled up in her hair, tugging sharply. She kept making noises of alarm, and he mumbled his apologies against her lips.

She grew tired of the pawing and huffing, taking what she thought was the fastest route out by blowing him. Except those sweaty, meaty hands got caught up in her hair again, yanking and gripping until her eyes watered.

Pinpricks over her scalp still tingling, she pulled back. "Can you not do that?" she said, irritation grating against the atmosphere of the sexual act.

He blinked, clearing his throat. "I thought girls liked that."

"Well, I don't."

It ended shortly after, with him stumbling to put his pants back on and make an exit. Staring at herself in the mirror as she brushed away his taste, Alex sneered at the idea that anyone actually liked hands in their hair, pulling at it, twisting it. Perhaps she had a sensitive scalp, or perhaps other girls had a higher tolerance for pain than her.

Either way, she always coaxed wandering hands away from her hair after that.

Then came Maggie.

Her hands were nimble and agile, gliding through Alex's hair as if they had been familiar with the curve of her skull for an eternity. She couldn't describe what came over her each time this happened, only that instead of discomfort she experienced ripples of pleasure that trickled across her scalp and cascaded down to her stomach.

Not only that, but she experienced the wonder of kissing someone who also had longer hair that she could tug, pet or play with. She grew accustomed to the tickle across her cheeks, or how their lips might get caught up within the curtains of hair. It amused Maggie, who was used to it.

And in sex, well, now she got why girls liked it.

It was a good key to knowing whether what she was doing was effective or not. The way Maggie patted at it when Alex kissed her neck, or tugged at it when she was about to come. She got used to the laughter that they shared when fingers got caught in tangles, got used to the way she lost herself to boundless pleasure as Maggie yanked it.

Here and now on the couch, Alex melted into the touch of fingers sifting through her hair. They were watching a documentary on whales and she felt like she was sinking deeper into that blue water, as deep as the camera could go.

“I like it when you play with my hair,” Alex said, her voice not much more than a hum.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The narrator droned on further and the glide of the whales together was graceful, magnetic almost. Alex closed her eyes, and felt the thud of her heart, and then lower, and lower.

Arousal swam to the surface with her as she reopened her eyes.

“Yeah,” she repeated, drawing away their blanket and throwing a leg over Maggie’s hips. She leaned in and murmured; “Now I’m gonna make you pull it.”

“Yeah?” Maggie huffed, tilting her hips forward to adjust to the weight on top of her. 

Alex didn’t answer, leaning in to kiss her again. Her hands started at Maggie’s cheeks, thumbs sweeping over her cheekbones, her ears, and fingers sliding around to cradle her skull. Maggie made a low noise of contentment, tipping her chin back and inviting Alex to kiss her deeper. 

Slipping down to stand, Alex opened her eyes and saw how Maggie’s features were painted blue in the glow from the television. Shadows flickered over her body as shapes swam on the marine documentary, but Alex was lost for a moment in the ethereal effect it had. Breathing heavy for a second, Maggie curled her hands in the hem of her own shirt and pulled it off. The she reached up and caught Alex by the back of the neck, pulling her into another kiss. 

Bent awkwardly at the waist and neck, Alex balanced herself by holding the back of the couch and leaning down into her kisses. Even when Maggie wrangled her own bra off and draped it over the couch, Alex kept kissing her, eventually skimming her knuckles over Maggie’s stomach and hooking her fingers in the waistband of her sweats. 

She pulled back, tugging at the elastic. “Yeah?”

Maggie nodded, lifting her hips. Alex got on her knees, shuffling legs apart and then stripping off the sweats. She mouthed at the swathes of skin available to her, feeling a hand alight on her head and gently urge her down. She grinned wickedly against Maggie’s navel, and nipped in warning. In reaction, Maggie’s lower body twitched, her fingers scratching out over Alex’s scalp in a way that made her almost purr. 

In the meagre, dancing glow of the TV, Alex let herself be led by the dark outlines of Maggie’s hips and the heat of her body, propping her thighs over her shoulders and leaning in. She could feel the goosebumps rise across Maggie’s hips and stomach as she placed her hands over her hipbones and swiped her tongue through wet heat. 

As she worked, Maggie’s grip grew tighter and tangled in the back of her hair. In between the monotonous, trace-like drone of the narrator’s voice from the documentary came Maggie’s moaning. Her lilting sighs and soft encouragements rose up between the chanting lines, underscoring it. 

Drawing closer to the pinnacle, Maggie’s grip was tight, burning at Alex’s roots, her legs trembling uncontrollably on her shoulders. And Alex craved that burn, that grip, that signal that Maggie was about to drown in ecstasy. 

She stared up in the gloom, seeing Maggie’s tensed stomach, her breasts, her neck craned back against the back of the couch - 

\- and then release, that grip loosening suddenly into flat pressure against the back of her skull, keeping her right  _ there _ as Maggie called out her name into the room. 

When Maggie had caught her breath and pulled her up to the couch, Alex could still feel the sting on her scalp. And it was a good sensation, one that tingled with the memory of the heights she had just taken Maggie to.

And much later, when the air was drying the sweat from their skin and she pressed her lips against Maggie’s damp collarbone, she experienced the divine sensation of her lover’s fingertips gently sifting through her hair.

Yes, when it came to Maggie, she couldn’t get enough of it.

 

**_Temperature play_ **

They strolled through an indoor market in Midvale, summer thick in the air. They handled handmade soaps, perfumes, bathroom supplies and candles. Alex picked a purple candle and smirked, and then spoke out of the corner of her mouth, lest the other market-goers overhear.

“When I was in college, I got into scented candles.”

Maggie hitched a hip against the stall, already amused. “Oh yeah?”

“Uh huh,” Alex confirmed, putting the candle down, “We all lit them in our dorms to get rid of the pot, sex and booze before parents visited at the weekend.”

Maggie snorted, and then picked up two candles. She was interested in their type, and already felt a plan brewing. They had come to Midvale to relax and have fun, and with the beginnings of a scheme in mind, that was exactly what she intended. 

It made her nervous at first, the idea of visiting Alex’s home town. With previous girlfriends, it had ranged from awkward to boring. She always felt out of place and longed for it to be over. Emily was the worst, with her parents enforcing those ambitions for a top architectural firm and looking down their noses at Maggie’s cop salary.

And yet Alex - with her middle class family home and her Californian upbringing - never made Maggie feel like a tagalong. Not like Emily had.

Still, with a number of the candles in hand, she was on edge when they went to the register, where the woman clearly knew Alex, not surprising in a small town.

Maggie tried to hide her wince as the woman’s eyes lit up in recognition. You never knew how a girlfriend would react seeing someone from their past, especially if they weren’t out in the first place. Shy, awkward, lying about them being just friends.

But Alex lifted her chin, full of pride, and showed Maggie off like she was a prize.

The woman was older, like an aunt. She marveled at the age Alex was now, as if it were only yesterday that she was a scrappy teen, even though the agent swore she visited the market just before Hannukah.

"And who's this beautiful stranger you've brought in to visit?"

"Pat, this is Maggie. She's my girlfriend."

Maggie insisted on paying as Alex’s phone went off. Her girlfriend stepped aside to take the call and she handed over the cash.

"You make a very beautiful couple," the woman said, the crow-feet at her eyes melting sincerity across her words.

"Thank you," Maggie said, and decided to throw a small town cliche back, "I'm pretty lucky to have found this one."

The woman laughed, playfully scolding her as she shut her register. "Good luck trying to get that one to settle down."

But the warning didn't phase Maggie. Because as soon as they were back into the bright midday sun, Alex's hand snaked around her elbow, gently gripping, her eyes bright, tugging her off in another direction. Maggie knew she would let Alex take her by the hand and drag her around the world.

Later when they were unpacking their loot, Maggie put a voice to the plan that had formulated in the market.

"You know, candles can be a nice addition to the bedroom,” she suggested. 

“Of course, they smell nice,” Alex replied, lifting out groceries and setting them on the island

Maggie reached out and stilled her hands, meeting her gaze. “That’s not what I meant. I meant the hot wax can be a nice addition to the bedroom.”

“Oh.” Eyebrows lifted, a sharp inhale. “ _ Oh _ …”

She had eyed the correct candles in the store. White, plain paraffin ones bought alongside the scented ones. In her experience, a high angle and a skilled lover could get the balance of pain and injury avoidance exactly right. 

Of course, this plan had required other bits and bobs she had also picked up in another store as Alex got caught up with an old school friend. She opened her bag and produced several other items, including matches and oil. 

Alex blinked. “And this?”

“Well…” Maggie purred, rounding the island and pulling Alex to face her by the belt loops. “To make the wax easier to remove after, you should probably oil me up first.”

Alex, the doctor, narrowed her eyes to make an assessment of whether that would be safe or not. Grabbing the candle, the matches, and Maggie's hand, she tugged them up the stairs.

In the midwinter, dusk still fell early. It cast long shadows from every surface, anticipation pouring from every crevice.  Alex worked theatrically; she stripped back the covers, flapped out a towel, and pushed Maggie down onto it. 

She set the matches, oil and candles on the nightstand. Then she reached for Maggie’s shirt, tossing it into a hamper. She shook the matches, rattling one out.  

Maggie stretched out on the towel, enjoying the excited energy rumbling off of Alex’s movements. “You’re gonna screw me without even kissing me again?” 

“Be patient,” Alex mumbled, striking the match and lighting the first candle. 

She lit a second, and then came back to straddle Maggie’s hips. She leaned down and kissed her with enough fire that Maggie wondered if she had lit herself with the match as well. When she drew back, the firelight danced across her gleeful expression. 

“We’re kinda like a candle, you know.”

Maggie scoffed, trailing her fingertips up under Alex’s shirt. “Oh really?”

“Yup. We’re cool and firm when we need to be,” she explained, leaning down to nip Maggie’s bottom lip between her teeth, “Hot and passionate other wise.”

“And we smell good.”

They shared a laugh, muffled against their lips, and then Alex bared the rest of her. 

Oiled hands raced up her thighs, over her stomach, her breasts, her biceps and sweeping to her over hands. Her blood ran hot under Alex’s touch, the slickness of the oil defining every muscle, every scar, every dip of her skin and bones. 

Alex chewed her bottom lip. “You’re sure this is safe?”

“Yeah,” Maggie said, trying to keep her breathing from stunting already, “I’ve done this before.”

Alex held the candle aloft, ready to tip. “And you like this?”

Maggie swallowed, seeing the readiness of the shift in Alex’s wrist. “Do it.”

She tipped. 

It hurt, as she expected. But it was new for Alex to wield this, and Maggie became addicted to each splash of heat. 

"God, are you alright?" Alex breathed.

Unabashed, unashamed, Maggie clutched the towel and spread her knees. Prompted, Alex felt how wet she was.

After that, Alex seemed to desire it too; she seemed to enjoy the way Maggie’s muscles jumped and tensed, which progressed and translated to a clutching around her fingers inside of her girlfriend.

Much later, when they had returned from Midvale to National City, Maggie lingered when she next lit a candle. A storm had knocked the power out, and she had been groping around her apartment for something to save her from the gloom. 

Alex may have been joking, but she was right about the analogy of their relationship. Maggie watched the flickering flame against the dark, and realised that was exactly what they were. A flicker of hope, of warmth, of light, against all the darkness they faced on a daily basis. 

Maggie smiled, rubbing her stomach through her shirt. She thought about that lady in the Midvale market, about her mentioning how hard it would be to get Alex to settle down. 

Maybe she was wrong. She hoped she was. 

 

**_Choking_ **

It began after drinks.

Dating was still fresh, and purely enjoyable, and they danced the final block to Alex’s apartment.  It was a professional neighbourhood. A longtime neighbour had to double take at the sight of them twirling around a streetlamp. Whether it was the surprise of two women swinging, three sheets to the wind, or whether it was the fact that one of those women was Alex Danvers - who had been a largely unproblematic neighbour - it was hard to tell.

Still, Alex ignored his shock. She felt the exhilaration of a rollercoaster, leaning into the turns and dips, the anticipation of the climb.

And Maggie, glassy eyed and grinning smugly, as if she knew a thousand secrets that she would never disclose, lightly caught her throat to keep her still. Alex had been in chokeholds before, had clawed and bucked and scratched her way to freedom, but Maggie’s touch left her weak in the knees, keeping her pinned to the wall with nothing but a weak hold and a lustful promise in her stare.

“You’re sexy as hell, you know that?” she murmured. The fog of alcohol thickened her tongue and Maggie chuckled.

Alex shifted and the hold tightened in a warning that wouldn’t be enforced.

“You drive me crazy, Danvers.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And like that, they were making out against the side of the building, a careful balance of sluggish yet insistent, until the blast of a horn from a passing vehicle broke them apart.

And the curiosity flourished as the days went by. She was well aware of the erotic implications; as a med student she had sat through a presentation on people who had been admitted to the ER due to injuries caused by sexual hijinks - mostly related to things begin forsaken in the anal passage - but there was a brief section on how tempered asphyxiation can enhance a sexual experience.

She watched Maggie cooking, the way she pinched at spices, chopped neat slices of peppers, knew how to tilt the pan just so. 

She watched Maggie gardening, tending to her bonsai. She saw the soil under the nail beds, hands that knew the nourishment the Earth brought.

She watched Maggie cleaning her gun, efficient and controlled. “Do you want yours done, too?”

Alex considered refusing, but she watched the skilled, familiar way Maggie worked at her weapon, and she realised she trusted her girlfriend’s ability and level of care. So she nodded, and waved at the side arm on the table.

Later, she couldn’t watch as Maggie’s fingers worked between her thighs, because her eyes were clenched shut in pleasure. They pushed inside her and ignited her blood the way a man was never adequate for.

Maggie was competent, a compliment in itself. Her touch could be tender, dexterous, and cautious. And as she swirled her tongue around the joints of Maggie's fingers in her mouth, Alex found herself asking for it.

The fingers slid out of her mouth with a pop. “Have you ever...put your hand around someone’s throat?”

Maggie drew back, propping herself up, eyes lighting with curiosity. “You mean, during sex?”

Alex ran her teeth over her bottom lip. “Yeah. During sex.”

Fingertips moved to her pulse, tracing the direction of her jugular all the way to her jaw. “Yeah. And been choked myself.”

“Does it feel good?” Alex asked, and then remembered the post-mortem photographs of men with belts around their necks. “As good as people try and risk their life for it, anyway?”

“It feels pretty surreal, like the volume’s being turned up in your body during orgasm.”

With how Maggie purred her words, Alex eagerly pushed into the notion. Her girlfriend indulged her; “We’ll start at the end, okay?”

Alex agreed, even if she wasn't sure what Maggie meant exactly. They built the atmosphere brick by brick, heat rising incrementally with each kiss placed against her neck, her breast, her stomach. She was on the verge of begging for Maggie to abandon the plan altogether and use her mouth when her girlfriend rose up with dark intent in her eyes.

Her hand pressed palm down to Alex's heaving stomach, as if to still her, and then danced down between her thighs. Alex groaned and twitched her hips up when fingers teased through wet heat, and she felt that familiar clenching in her stomach, the shake in her thighs, the rushing of blood down to her centre.

She could feel the vibration of the moans in her throat more than she could hear them, so lost was she to her pleasure. And then, just as she had forgotten altogether what she was supposed to be waiting for, a hand slid up the curve of her neck and pressure points pushed against her pulse.

And her body melted from a physical form into pure sensation as she came. She thought she must have looked possessed in the throes of her orgasm, her eyes rolling back into her skull. And the thudding pulse in her ears like a drumbeat as her climax crashed through her.

It took much longer than usual to come back to herself, feeling as if she was swimming up through warm water. Eyelids lidded, she observed Maggie between her bent knees, head tilted in that all familiar way.

"Well?" Maggie

"My god," Alex said, voice hoarse.

Maggie chuckled, warm and raspy, and slid her hand up to grip Alex's chin. She leaned down, taking for herself a possessive kiss, and Alex let her take all she wanted. 

They experimented a little more over time, but Alex found she only prefered the ending; the volume crescendoing in her ears.

 

**_Knife play_ **

With Maggie moving more and more of her things into her apartment, Alex knew it was time for a clean out. But any time she tried to clear out her closet - pun notwithstanding - she got caught in the middle. She sifted through items she hadn’t held in years, trying to use them to unlock dozens of lost memories. 

That was how she ended up cross-legged on her bedroom floor, drowning in physical photographs. A lot of them were in albums she thought were in Midvale, but clearly she had brought with her.

Looking at old photographs was like peering into a different world. Considering the trajectory of her life, she wasn’t sure she could ever imagine that she had been the girl in these photographs. She laid them out in chronological order, seeing very clearly the subtext of each. There she was at four years old, smiling between her parents at a waterpark. There she was at ten, beaming after winning a science award. There she was at fourteen, scowling at Kara as Jeremiah winced. 

There she was at seventeen, smiling with her high school friends, her eyes dull. At twenty, a college party, some boy’s arms around her waist. 

At twenty-three, an ex-boyfriend kissing her cheek. She’s looking down, away, ashamed for being uncomfortable with him. With all of them. 

Her apartment door opened and closed, the sigh and rattle of Maggie taking off her jacket and laying the keys in the bowl comforting her. She set a few of the photographs in a line, going from earliest to latest. 

“Hey,” she called, remaining seated.

“Hey babe,” Maggie replied, shuffling off her boots and padding over, “You know that case I called about this morning? Found a lead…”

Alex traced the middle photograph, taken at a school event. She wore the Midvale High School tracksuit, a medal around her neck. The sorrow of the grieving fifteen year old radiated out through time. 

“Good news.”

“Busted them, too.”

Alex raised her head at that. “Great news.”

Maggie carefully inched around the photographs and curled herself down next to her. “What are you doing?”

Alex waved at the boxes, the dust, the albums around her. “Just going through some old stuff…”

The photographs of her at a certain phase of her life looked skeletal; a girl with ribs on show and sallow cheeks, much too thin and rudderless in the world.  

“You don’t look well here,” Maggie said, delicate and gentle, the way you spoke to a child in euphemisms about the horrors of the world. 

“I wasn’t,” Alex said. She moved on to the photographs of her in college and saw that same emptiness, a far cry from the fit disciplined agent she would evolve into.  “Mom thought I was getting an eating disorder.”

“Were you?”

Alex held one photograph that captured a particularly haunting moment. Eliza, Kara and a few family friends had a barbecue on a ridge in the Midvale Country park. The sun cast low over the water, and as the camera snapshotted the moment of deliberate smiles, Alex could be seen in the background, holding herself and looking out over the edge of the ridge to the sea. 

“It's hard to eat when you just...feel sick with...grief,” she managed. Her head spun; unsure if the knowledge that Jeremiah was alive would have comforted that girl. 

“I get it.” Maggie settled a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I totally get it.”

She had mentioned several times about how her aunt had to coax her to eat, cooking meals that she knew would be filling and nutritious and more or less making Maggie eat them. She didn’t have much of an appetite when her father threw her out, but her aunt didn’t care. It was hell at the time, but as she recovered, she was grateful that her aunt had pushed her and not let her waste away in her misery. 

She picked up a snap of Kara and Streaky, and despite it all felt joy welling up inside. Kara’s smile was infectious, and Alex found herself beaming at the poor cat squashed up in her sister’s hug. 

She put it down and returned to the present, coming away from the pull of the past. She looked at her girlfriend. “So the aliens, what was their brand?”

Maggie’s lips curled into a sneer. All groups trafficking and exploiting aliens for sex work had something to sell to their customers. Something exotic, something a human couldn’t - or wouldn’t - offer to them. 

“They were forcing Naghuns into sex slavery,” she spat, “Letting customers cut up their skin in some kind of act.”

Naghuns had skin that regenerated and healed at an accelerated pace on Earth. Cuts could heal in hours, flawless skin back in place. 

“So, knife play?”

“Yup.” 

Alex shifted to face Maggie, sweeping the photographs into messy piles. She wanted to focus on her present now, this living breathing woman in front of her that the depressed girl in the photographs could only dream of being her future lover. 

“Would you ever bring a weapon into the bedroom?” she said, trying to coax some lightness back into the atmosphere. 

Maggie’s eyebrows raised, eyes glancing to Alex’s lips and back. “Would I, or could I?”

“Both?”

“No. You?”

She tried to imagine Maggie above her, a knife in her grip, but she couldn’t. They brought strength, agility and feisty energy to their bedroom, but they never brought the brutality of their professions. 

“I...get the danger aspect. I can understand, but at the same time I don’t understand.” Alex frowned at her turn of phrase. 

“I get it,” Maggie assured. 

Their love could be violent, passionate, all teeth and grips on wrists and hips flexing harder, pushing against barriers. They could be guttural, and wrecking, and consuming. 

But it was also gentle, and tender, and two women in love with their soft nature. Alex reached out and brushed her thumb against Maggie’s lower lip. It was Sunday mornings, making love with their pyjamas half on. Cuddling during a sad film. Holding each other after a terrible day. Dealing with life, together. 

“You’re a big softie, you know that?” Maggie said. 

“For you,” Alex admitted, and leaned in. 

_ I never liked being intimate _ . 

Alex’s own voice rung in her head as Maggie kissed her back. She suddenly felt as if she had something to prove to those versions of herself, she wanted to prove she could be a lover, could  _ have _ a lover, could take pleasure in another’s body, even if that other person was a woman. 

She got to her knees and carefully pushed at Maggie’s shoulers, tipping them back onto the floor. Still kissing, they rearranged, and when they broke, Maggie stared up at her in amusement. 

“There’s a perfectly good bed right there, you know.”

“Mmhmm..”

She had kissed the length of Maggie’s neck and over her breasts, removed her shirt, bra and slacks before another protest came. 

“Alex, ah-” Maggie sighed, tipping her head back for a second, “Alex, you’ll hurt your back bending like that, get - oh-”

Alex grumbled, flattening onto the floor but refusing to move them to the bed. She traced her tongue around Maggie’s navel and curled her hands around her thighs. 

“Nothing wrong with a little pain, Maggie,” she teased, and pulled down her underwear. 

Her girlfriend was right; the floor was awkward and flat against her stomach and knees, and she had to bend her neck at an odd angle. 

But when she got to love Maggie this way, she would never complain about the pain.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy :)


End file.
